WRA receives funding from a partnership of federal, state, and local governments as well as grants including:
State of Delaware
The State of Delaware chairs a Water Supply Coordinating Council, which has developed over two billion gallons of reserve water storage since the drought of 1999. Tributary action teams are developing cleanup plans to restore streams to fishable and swimmable status in the Christina Basin, Appoquinimink, Inland Bays, Broadkill, and Murderkill watersheds, among others. The Delaware Source Water Protection Law of 2001 has prompted counties and towns to adopt wellhead-protection ordinances. Watershed-management programs are paying off as since 1990, 79 percent of monitoring stations along 30 Delaware streams have recorded improved or constant water quality for dissolved oxygen, sediment, bacteria, nitrogen, and phosphorus.
New Castle County
New Castle County administers an award-winning Water Resource Protection Area ordinance to protect the quality and quantity of wellhead, recharge, reservoir watersheds, and limestone aquifer areas. More than 20 percent of county land is protected by this code. The County recently modernized the Stormwater Drainage Code and is working with DelDOT and the City of Newark in complying with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency stormwater permit. The county’s 2007 Comprehensive Plan Update recommends zoning practices to protect the Delaware Bay coastal wetlands and forests in southern New Castle County.
City of Newark
The City of Newark recently completed a new reservoir, the first water supply impoundment in Delaware since the Great Depression (see link at the left). The City also successfully funded new water-treatment plants along the White Clay Creek and at the South Wellfield. The City was one of the first to employ open-space zoning, and now almost all of the floodplain along the White Clay Creek and Upper Christina River are now part of the park system. Newark is one of the only towns that employs a utility approach and publicly maintains stormwater facilities. Along with the county, the City of Newark is a key signatory to the White Clay Creek Wild and Scenic River Watershed Management Plan.
City of Wilmington
The City of Wilmington has followed a regional approach ever since it built the Delaware River wastewater-treatment plant, a facility that treats all of northern Delaware’s wastewater. The City is strengthening and expanding the Hoopes Reservoir dam to create over 150 million gallons of additional storage. Wilmington fixed leaking water mains and saved three million gallons per day of drinking water that used to trickle into the ground. The City has invested over $10 million and installed million-gallon underground tanks to reduce combined sewer overflows. Recently, Wilmington became the first government in Delaware to adopt a stormwater utility to fund sewer improvements.
